A Busy Time

I have a full time job as a social worker at a psychiatric prison.  I am task oriented, and I want the best I can offer for my patients, so I do not end my work week at 40 hours.  I end each work day after I have finished the tasks for the day.  I will admit that when I have personal plans after work, I adjust my work load accordingly so I can defer some tasks for the next day.

My volunteer work includes serving on the board of directors of a social service agency.  I am the secretary of the board, and occasionally am involved in other committees or tasks.  As the board secretary, I take the board meeting minutes.  I use a table top recorder to help me with this task, and the board members are in agreement that doing so makes the minutes very accurate, as they should be.  To do this, takes time.  I am not a transcriptionist, and do not have a set up to transcribe the minutes. So, I also take notes at the meeting, and my first rough draft of the minutes comes from transcribing  my notes. Then I correct the notes using the recorder, and do at least one if not two hard copy edits (for summarizing, grammar, etc.)

My volunteer work also includes work with the local branch of the National Association of Social Workers. I do most of the communication work for this branch.  This used to mean sending postcards about branch activities, to NASW members, and printing labels for brochures for the annual ethics workshops to every social worker in our area for whom we could we could find an address.  That was pre-personal computer days.  Now, we do mass emails about our monthly activities. We also do emails regarding employment opportunities, other area CEU activities, and de-identified client needs.

So monthly, I update our membership list, and send out an announcement about our monthly CEU luncheon meeting.  I also maintain email lists for area students, who are invited to our monthly CEU luncheons, and to non-members who are invited to our monthly CEU luncheons, and get the other emails such as employment opportunities and client needs. So keeping the up the email lists takes some work. 

And, each message I send out does not include one message: the mass mailings are done by groupings: the NASW membership list; the few people who have notified me that their ISP filters do not allow them to get emails by mass mailings, and the several lists of mass emails, as there are only so many emails that can be included in one group.  I also email to our local social work students. And when appropriate, to other interested professionals. So one email involves sending out 9 or 10 emails.  That is not that difficult, and only somewhat time consuming.  But still, time consuming.

We have some members of NASW for whom we do not have emails.  Because they are members of our group, we send them snail mail announcements of our activities.  This is not difficult: I print out envelopes addressed to each person, get copies of the announcement, and stuff the envelope, seal it, and affix a stamp and because I have so many complimentary return address labels, affix the labels. 

This time of year, our local NASW branch has a lot of activities:  in addition to our March monthly meeting, we have the annual March is Professional Social Work Month Awards Banquet.  This involves sending out the call for nominations by email and snail mail to our members, and later, sending out the ballot by email and snail mail to our members. Then we send out the invitation for the banquet itself, to our members by email and snail mail, and by email to the area social workers and social work students. 

Additionally, we are working on our annual ethics workshop.  We used to send out mass mailings and I printed up the labels for the brochures, we sorted them by zip code, and mass mailed them from the US Post Office. Because the mailing rules changed, and because we have such a large group of social workers for whom we have emails, we mostly send out the brochures by email. We only send out snail mail to the few NASW members for whom we do not have emails.

All of this takes time:  setting up mail merge to address envelopes, getting copies made, folding and stuffing envelopes, affixing return address labels and stamps, sealing envelops, and making the trip to the post office to mail these envelopes.

I do not mind doing this work, especially because so many of our area social workers take the time to thank me for my efforts.  And, I have been named South Plains Branch Social Worker of the Year twice since 2006.

But the work is seasonal, and right now, the NASW work is busier than at other times of the year.